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Tour Notebook: Web.com postseason starts in Indiana

The Web.com Tour begins its second postseason this week with the Hotel Fitness Championship in Fort Wayne, Ind. When the Web.com Tour finals culminate at the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley on Sept. 18-21, 50 new PGA Tour cards will have been earned for the 2014-2015 season.

So how did last year’s 50 do on the PGA Tour this year?

The retention rate of those players who finished among the top 125 on the FedEx Cup points list this season was 32 percent — 16 of the 50 players kept their cards.

That list includes Jacksonville Beach residents Russell Knox and Tim Wilkinson, who made the FedEx Cup playoffs and are still in it after the first event, The Barclays.

Three of those 16 players won on the PGA Tour: Chesson Hadley at the Puerto Rico Open, Brendon Todd at the HP Byron Nelson Championship and Seung-Yul Noh at the Zurich Classic.

Eleven of the 50 did not qualify for the Web.com Tour Finals this season because they finished out of the top 200 in FedEx Cup points. Two of the situations had to be especially painful: Kevin Foley finished 201st, one point behind No. 200 Doug LaBelle II and Lee Williams, who drained a 60-foot putt at No. 18 of the Valley in the final round last year to clinch his card, finished 204th, five points out.

Alex Prugh had a backup plan. He finished 206th on the FedEx Cup but played enough times on the Web.com Tour to finish 36th in earnings and get back into the finals.

There will be 23 players who earned their Tour cards at last year’s finals back in the series again. That includes John Peterson, who was the finals money leader, Trevor Immelman, who won the first Finals event at Fort Wayne, Bud Cauley of Jacksonville and Hudson Swafford of St. Simons Island, Ga.

I love New York

The PGA Tour announced earlier this week that the 2017 Presidents Cup will be played at Liberty National in New Jersey, which has been the venue for The Barclays twice, in 2009 and 2013.

Liberty National is the fourth U.S. venue to host a Presidents Cup. It has been played at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club near Washington, D.C., Harding Park in San Francisco and Muirfield Village in Columbus, Ohio.

That adds to an already crowded schedule in the New York metropolitan area for significant golf events over the next 10 years.

In addition to The Barclays rotating among Liberty National, the Plainfield (N.J.) Country Club and the Ridgewood (N.J.) Country Club, the U.S. Open will be in the area twice in the next decade (Shinnecock Hills in 2018 and Winged Foot in 2020), the PGA Championship will visit three times (2016 at Baltusrol in New Jersey, 2019 at Bethpage Black on Long Island and 2022 at Trump National Bedminster (N.J.) and the 2024 Ryder Cup will be at Bethpage.

The Barclays will add Trump Ferry Point in 2017.

That’s five major championships, the top two international match-play events and 11 FedEx Cup playoff events (counting last week) for a total of 18 tournaments in a decade.

Tee-to-green

The PGA Tour has launched a “strokes gained: tee-to-green” statistic to go with its “strokes gained: putting.”

Strokes gained in putting was compiled by comparing the number of putts a player needed to hole out against the rest of the field. Strokes gained tee-to-green will compare a player’s final score against the field average, minus his strokes gained putting.

For example, if a player shoots 68 and the field average is 70, the first index is +2.0. His strokes gained putting is subtracted so if that player has an index of 1.2, his strokes gained tee-to-green is +0.8.

Based on that formula, it’s no surprise who the top five are in strokes gained tee-to-green for the season through last week’s tournament: Rory McIlroy is +2.019, Sergio Garcia is +1.855, Jim Furyk is +1.639, Hideki Matsuyama is +1.618 and Justin Rose is +1.611.

Notable: The second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, with the top 90 in points after the final round advancing to the BMW Championship. ... Henrik Stenson began his surge to the 2013 FedEx Cup title by winning last year by two shots over Steve Stricker. Stenson shot 66-66 on the weekend.

Notable: The Web.com Finals begin, with the top 75 from the Web.com Tour money list and players from No. 126-200 on the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup points list playing. ... There will be 25 past PGA Tour winners and major champions Trevor Immelman, Ben Curtis and Y.E. Yang in the field.